The Conventions of 2024: Part 3: Long Island Retro Gaming Expo and AnimeNYC

Well then… what an eventful month that was.

Starting off the blogpost, you may be wondering how the schedule ended up like this since if you were to follow my convention coverages from years past, normally AnimeNYC would be the final big event I would cover to close out the year. Well, in something of a curveball moment not long after the conclusion of AnimeNYC 2023, it was announced that AnimeNYC will be rescheduled from its usual timeslot of November to three months earlier in August, causing it to fall exactly two weeks after the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo. As you know, these two events are something of big deals for me as one is unlike any other event I attend and in the year and the other is easily the largest anime event in the tristate area. So to have them both not only in the same month, but quite close to one another, it’s been quite stressful on me since it meant I had to focus all of my time prepping for these two events and not being able to spend much of my extra funds on anything else that’s not a convention purchase.

With that said, it is time to finally cover August’s duo of conventions for the year, featuring the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo and AnimeNYC coming in swinging to close out a wild summer. Last time we visited the schedule we had just wrapped up Brooklyn Comic Con, an event that had lots to do and had a great roster of vendors and artists representing every different category of convention but fell slightly short of perfection due to some odd design choices and the relative lack of space to maneuver around the event and options for food. The event before that, Cradle Con, was a very solid all-around comic convention that went in hard on the comic theming and featured the return of many of my favorite artists in the local convention space.

Long Island Retro Gaming Expo was the first event of the month and this time, they returned bigger than ever. Taking everything from the past year and expanding it out with even more games to play and shops to buy from, the event would find itself with record attendance across all three days. A greater number of big-name special guests including hosts of gaming-focused Youtube channels and podcasts attended, some of them also being in various panels throughout the three days of the event.

Entering the museum converted into a retro gaming convention, viewers were greeted to the vendor’s hall where retro video games, consoles, and homemade goods were up for grabs. I personally went into the event looking for two games in particular to grab: Fighters’ Megamix on the Sega Saturn, and Gungrave on the Playstation 2. Alas, no booth in the vendor’s hall stocked either game, even amongst the hundreds of PS2 games at every booth. I did however come out of the event with a few games for other consoles (home-brews included) and I would have bought more were I not saving up for AnimeNYC in two weeks from then. Perhaps the biggest get from the event was a sealed copy of the Mega Man Wily Wars Collector’s Edition that has long gone out of print for several years. Gaming-themed books also populated the event and I found myself leaving the venue with three of them in tow, all sold by the special guests that set up in the vendors’ hall.

This year, the event went all out with a Sega Dreamcast theme for the console’s 25th anniversary. The entire third floor of the building was completely filled with playable Dreamcast consoles and banners that gave insight on the system’s history, the event guide and badges featured VMU’s, and you could even purchase VMU shells with the event’s logo that you could put real VMU parts inside. Unsurprisingly, there were more than just Dreamcast games across the event and one good look at the map would show all the themed sections returning from last year. The first floor’s main freeplay sections were once more separated into quadrants: Console Freeplay, PC Freeplay, The Museum, and Tournaments. Console Fereeplay remained the most like it did last year, playing retro games on period-correct CRT televisions but with different games and a small section devoted to the history of Tetris (the focus of 2023’s special third floor exhibit). PC Freeplay, meanwhile, managed to get a big glowup in the form of many of the computers present getting some mixture of running with a full or partial 90’s PC gaming setup. Not every game provided the full retro PC gaming experience but getting to play the likes of Jazz Jackrabbit on authentic hardware was a delight.

The Museum continued its quest to showcase rare and exotic gaming consoles, handhelds, and computers. There weren’t as many new additions when it came to consoles since the roster only got a few additions, but for computers the section deeper within the Museum that was previously only partially filled with retro computers was now fully stocked on every corner. Even if the computers lacked small pamphlets like the consoles did to give history on each machine, seeing the room covered toe-to-toe in computers was very satisfying. Adjacent to the Museum was the Pokélab, a Pokémon-themed room set in front of a lunar lander allowing you to trade for event-only Mythical Pokemon and transfer event items to old Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS cartridges. The Tournaments section located across from the Museum remained mostly intact, although the FGC group that organized most of the section in previous years did not return (to my knowledge), leading to the only modern fighting games being Street Fighter 6, Smash Ultimate, and Tekken 8. Personally, I consider the retro games better fitting for the event, using older entries in beloved fighting game series along the competitive modes in non-fighting games.

The second floor featured the return of the High Score Challenge, the event’s other big competitive attraction spanning many different consoles up to the Wii U, and Eon Gaming returned to feature console LAN games and tournaments, including a massive Mario Kart Double Dash tournament on Saturday. The second floor also featured an entire section dedicated to indie games on retro hardware (including a homemade game console!) and the Timeline exhibit returned again as the second floor’s signature attraction. The 2010’s were unfortunately not well-represented in this section, although to be fair the era only ended four years ago and the only consoles that would fit in the section thus far would probably be the 3DS and Wii U (the Wii U was present but it was running homebrew software (a port of Sonic Mania to be exact) and the backdrop and history pamphlet made for it labeled it as a 2000’s console). The event also has two arcades: the Hangar Arcade on the first floor and the Arcade Age exhibit on the second floor. The Hangar Arcade was a really cool Japanese-style arcade with many fighting games, puzzle games, SHMUPs, and rhythm games. The Arcade Age Exhibit was an American-style arcade that, unfortunately for this year, lacked a number the iconic and noteworthy arcade titles of the era and didn’t share much of any history or background on the games that were present. In short, it had great choices for arcade games and some standout picks but was done better in prior years of the expo.

If you wanted more videogame-adjacent entertainment, the musical performances and panels delivered. This time the musical performances were made far less obstructive than they were in prior events thanks to being set at lower volumes in the main room. One of the four groups would even perform inside the planetarium once panels wrapped up for the day. And speaking of panels, there were lots of them this year across the two panel rooms (one of them being the aforementioned planetarium) at the event. I thought I had seen where a third panel room could have been used somewhere in the venue but turns out it was being using as a staff and guest lounge. They would even bust out beer and alcohol once the vendors closed up shop at 7PM and let people purchase drinks. Drinks in front of many rare and valuable retro gaming consoles and hardware… I shiver up at the thought.

Overall, this was probably peak LIRetro for me. I attended both Friday and Saturday till late into the evening, enjoying the atmosphere, catching up with friends, and trying out some cool and forgotten retro games that even I was not familiar with. If you’re wondering where the artists and cosplays in this post were; I never associated LIRetro with having that strong of an artist’s alley, considering the size of the venue and catering more to vendors than artists. There were a few cosplays I quite liked, but not enough to build a large showcase of them at the event. Maybe 2025’s event will turn out enough cosplay photos to make a folder of them online. And speaking of future events I do have some thoughts on the Festival of Games, the winter holiday spinoff of LIRetro, but I’ll save them for a future post once I know if the event is happening or not. Especially since I still have one more event to cover in this post…

Two weeks later, I would attend AnimeNYC 2024, the seventh overall AnimeNYC and the sixth I would attend (having skipped 2021 for reasons that should be obvious considering what 2020 was like). By now, the event’s design and layout have been set in stone and the biggest difference this time around was the move from mid-November to towards the end of August. I had gotten accustomed to the event’s late Fall timeframe and aside from not having to pack and walk around the convention with a coat, it all felt very familiar to me. Of course, the only caveat with the timing was I didn’t get much of an opportunity to recover from two days of the Retro Gaming Expo and event prep ate into much of the free time I would have otherwise spent to finish up the last of my end-of-summer todo list before September hit and the days became shorter and colder.

As hinted at, the venue changed very little since the prior year. After spending two years confined to the northern side of the venue’s big vendor area, the Artist’s Alley moved back to the rear end behind all of the vendor booths and was spread out to fit a much bigger space as it did in 2019. And “bigger space” would be underselling just how massive the artist alley was this year: Looking at the map, I counted roughly 624 individual booths and with some of the booths being double booths, there could have been as many as 800 or so artists at this one event. All I can say is I ate exceptionally well that day at the cost of sacrificing time away from other parts of the event, and with the huge selection of artists all selling at the venue, I couldn’t hold longer chats with the artists that I could at Castle Point Anime convention, Cradle Con, and Brooklyn Comin Con. And with that many artists, it led to one of the biggest commission hauls of any in person event, even if I did miss two booths that were offering commissions and three of the artists I was able to reach and commission in time were not able to finish the commission on site. It was a very busy weekend, after all. And something about moving the event to the end of August might have had something to do with it.

Yup, just like LI Retro, AnimeNYC was able to host record attendance during the three day period of the event. And it was all likely a factor of the move to hosting the convention at the end of Summer instead of the end of Fall. With people not busy with studies and holiday prep, even more people were able to attend this time around, and the results showed when the final attendance numbers were revealed. Thankfully, it didn’t seem like there were as many crowds throughout the day, mostly because of the size of the venue being able to contain the bigger crowds of people in the event. Crowds still would gather at the event, particularly in busier parts of the vendors and artist’s areas and the main lobby, but at least people were still able to navigate around the event easily. If there was some part of the convention you wanted to go to, you usually were able to head there with no issue whatsoever. Compare NYCC, where pretty much most of the place is packed with attendees on almost every corner during the day, the main lobby and artist alley seeing the worst of it until the event dies down following the closure of the vendors and artists at 7/8 PM.

The number of panels were very numerous, with five different panel rooms of varying sizes plus two stages for live shows: the Main Stage and the Sakura Stage. Unfortunately, with my time through the Artist’s Alley taking up the majority of my focus, I was unable to attend neither panel I considered going to in the morning and afternoon of my visit. I was still thankfully able to get a good break in from the convention’s activities during an admittedly late 4PM lunch (it was typical convention junk food, as to be expected) but it made me recall back to when I was able to make it to one, sometimes two panels in 2018 and 2019 and was prevented from attending a panel in 2023 due to being similarly focused on the now ballooned in size artist’s alley. Maybe at DerpyCon and AnimeNJ++ later this year I’ll find a panel or two I’m interested in to discuss in the final two parts of this year’s convention coverages… just don’t expect me to pay any attention to the ones at NYCC as my attention will be laser focused on just vendors and artists.

Next to the panels was a very packed video gaming section, moving from a corner of the main floor down to where you would otherwise experience the Artist’s Alley at NYCC. It was full of arcade games, indie games, console games, and tabletop games. The arcade lineup, provided by Physic Drive, is pretty much what one would expect from an anime convention arcade: tons of Japanese rhythm games and candy cabinets with popular fighting games and other head-to-head titles loaded on. The candy cabinets in particular had a few machines I was very familiar with: Sonic the Fighters, Mr. Driller 2, Windjammers, and Tetris the Grand Master 3. Probably the big standout was F-Zero AX, the arcade counterpart to the beloved GameCube classic F-Zero GX, complete with its memory card port. The console games were also typical anime convention fare: lots and lots of fighting games on PlayStation and Nintendo Switch and you could probably make easy guesses on what games were loaded on the many systems up for play. I didn’t bat much of an eye at the indie games and the tabletop games; mostly since by then the event was fast approaching 9PM and I would be leaving, preventing me from sinking too much time into any of the games in the event halls (and also because I can just play/emulate everything back at home).

The cosplays at the event were just as strong as they usually are each year, and after giving Brooklyn Comic Con’s cosplays little attention and not bothering with the Retro Gaming Expo’s small number, I went wild with snapping pictures of cosplays I found within AnimeNYC and walked home with 146 different shots. Nowhere near close to the record, in part because of just how big the Artist’s Alley was this year, and I do not expect to break the record anytime soon unless I were to dedicate the entire event to taking pictures of cosplays. As for what “trends” I was able to spot amongst the cosplays I did take:

• One Piece was all over the event, breaking grounds as one of the top dogs of the Shonen anime world amongst the expected HoYoverse reps. I couldn’t turn a corner without seeing at least some OP cosplays and I believe I ran into at least five or six Zoro cosplayers at the event. 
• Speaking of HoYoverse, yup, they’re still alive and kicking. Plenty of cosplayers of the current trifecta of MiHoYo games (Genshin, Honkai, and Zenless) appeared to rep the scene. Though in the end I didn’t seem to see as many of them as I did in 2022 and 2023.
• One series that did get quite a noticeable amount of rep via cosplays was Final Fantasy. A Sephiroth was the first cosplay I took after stepping into the building and from there I would run into several Clouds, Tifas, a Barren Wallace, a Vincent Valentine, and a Reno. It was great to see some FFVII love out in the venue, especially following the launch of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth earlier this year.
• Next to One Piece in the “category of Shonen cosplays” was none other than the always-fabulous and mega-popular shonen franchise Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. With the franchise still riding the highs of the extremely successful anime adaptations since a decade ago. I believe I ran into two Jotaros, two Josukes, and a literal pair of DIO (said DIO being the second to last cosplays I snapped before exiting the vendors’—the actual last cosplay was a Raiden of Metal Gear Rising fame)
• My Hero Academia, Chainsaw Man, and Demon Slayer were still alive and kicking, and fellow “Big 3” members Dragon Ball and Bleach continued to get love in the form of cosplays. Not as much as I remember, considering just how much of a melting pot this event was when it came to franchise variety. Kaiju No. 8 also started gaining some traction amongst the cosplays.
• There was a small but noticeable number of League of Legends cosplays with Jinx being cosplayed by at least three people at the event, all repping different skins of hers in the process.
• I’m grouping the fighting game cosplays I saw at the event into one, but the FGC got some small but healthy representation at the event outside of the gaming area, including Guilty Gear’s Potemkin and Testament, Fatal Fury’s Terry, two Dante’s (per his inclusion in the MvC games) and gender swapped Morrigan and M.Bison towards the end of the day.
• The biggest surprise in terms of cosplays: Gurren Lagann. Yup, my favorite mecha anime still gets love at these events, including two different Simons, three Yoko Littlers (one of which was gendeerswapped), and one Kamina. Considering the series tended to get overshadowed by all the Shonen franchises, it was nice seeing a good number of cosplays of it.

And that was AnimeNYC. I may have preferred last year if only because it was easier to navigate around and my time wasn’t entirely consumed by Artist’s Alley, but this was still a great events with tons of what I love about anime conventions. It’ll still take some time to get used to the event’s new Summer setting, especially after so many years of traveling out in November to cap off the year with one big event. And speaking of big, I only see the event getting a lot bigger in the future… or scaling back a bit because of how much it grew in the span of a single year. That said, you can find all of the cosplays I snapped at the event and the commissions I scavenged for this year at the appropriate links.

And speaking of NYCC, next time we visit the convention coverage series in Part 4, I will be doing a dual-coverage of October events New York Comic Con 2024 and the grand return to Derpycon 2024. Part 5 will, likewise, close out the year with AnimeNJ++ in November plus some words in regards to Festival of Games whenever or not it happens this year.

To conclude today’s post, my sincere apologies if this one came quite late into the season. I was swamped in work on various projects big and small and wanted to really take my time on this entry in particular since both LIRetro and AnimeNYC mean a lot to me as a fan of anime and retro games. I promise the NYCC + DerpyCon entry won’t be this long of a read unless something were to happen at either event that I absolutely had to bring up.

Anyways, cya all later!

The Search for More Video Game Music

...Yeah, I had absolutely nothing ready for the blog in August considering I was prepping for and attending two big conventions during the month. More on them later in the month when I get some time in-between figuring out my plans for the season to give them the full scoop.

Anyways, I'm typing on my blog as we speak for one simple request. A while ago, I came across this music track that found its way into a few Chinese-made games, most notably a mobile game or two and a bootleg console. I tried searching around for where the song could have came from, probably some MMO from the region that got mega-huge in the mid 2000's and was since snatched up by game developers for whatever project they desired.

I did manage to get a clean recording of the song from the aforementioned bootleg console, but unfortunately it cuts out a few seconds into the song. I thought I'd post it anyways since how else will I provide context for the kind of song I'm searching for.

Link to the song

If you know of this song and/or what game it comes from, please let me know in the comments or through social media.

The Conventions of 2024: Part 2: Cradle Con and Brooklyn Comic Con

 (Yes, I swapped Temera and Wailmarin on the schedule since the former being a resident of New York made for a better fit)

Hello all and welcome to Part 2 of the big convention write-ups of the year of 2024. Last time, we discussed EMcon and Castle Point Anime Convention, two back-to-back different-sized events that I quite enjoyed. With Part 2, we’ll be taking a look at CradleCon and Brooklyn Comic Con, the events I attended in May and June respectively. Both of these events share the same mold in their focus on general pop culture, ala what New York Comic Con would gravitate to over time. And while Cradle Con is definitely rooted in its focus on being a comic convention, BKCC (not BYCC, as I foolishly tagged the event under on Twitter) had a much broader genre representation between comics, video games, and anime.

With the intro done, what better way to start than with CradleCon 2024? As one can tell by its title, this event is located at the Cradle of Aviation, a museum that also doubles as a convention center throughout most of the year. You may recognize this as the same location that hosts the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo (as well as its holiday spin-off, the Festival of Games) each year. It’s quite a versatile location in terms of what it can be suited up for, considering it has done both comic conventions and gaming conventions year by year. For this year, the layout remained much of the same: Vendors on the first floor, artists on the second. Of course with me being Mr. Artist Alley Guy I pretty much remained on the second floor for the grand majority of my visit, with occasional visits down to the lower flower to roam the vendors.

Since the event takes place on Long Island, many of my local artist friends that table at next to every local event on my schedule throughout the year were present and had tables at Cradle Con. Others I would recognize from the same event last year also attended and easily remembering me back when I came up to their booths to chat. As for the artist alley, it was an enjoyable one; Smaller than most of the other events I attend yearly (with only EMcon and the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo having smaller artist alleys) but still offering a decent chunk of artists to chat with and buy from. Being an event closely themed around comics, there were a lot of comics and comic-related art being sold across the vendors and the artists’ alleys. Obviously, comics are not exactly my thing, so I tend to skip on buying comics unless it’s an indie-published comic that has a cool hook that I enjoy or one done by a close friend that I’m very familiar with.

Unlike most of the events that I attend year-round, CradleCon closed its doors completely at 5 PM. It gave me enough time to make several rounds through the building, converse with various artists, and then get out with a good chunk of photos of the venue and commissions from the artists. Compared to the Retro Gaming Expo, not every space of the event was filled with something to do- it was mostly confined to the main lobby filled with vendors, the cafeteria area that was also filled with vendors, the second floor where all the artists resided, and a small section of the Gallery (the eastern section of the museum) that was used to host professional artists, celebrity guests, and cosplays. The venue’s third floor was completely vacant and only saw use as a hangout space away from the rest of the convention’s activity. There were a few panels but I didn’t recall the full schedule of them, other than some of them being held within the Planetarium Dome Theater which is probably the coolest room I’ve ever seen a panel be hosted inside. A massive number of seats and cool colorful lighting all go a long way to make a panel held in this room mesmerizing.

Overall, Cradle Con was pretty fun and I’m glad I got to attend and get out one more big event with the local comic artists of Long Island before summer would hit. I even got to treat myself to a snow cone from one of the food trucks outside before making my leave. Getting a healthy number of commissions was the cherry on top and you can see the complete set here. Sadly I did not take any cosplay photos at the event as I was focused on other parts of the event, and considering I took tons at Castle Point only a few weeks earlier, I wanted to give myself a break from snapping more.

You can see the full gallery of Cradle Con convention commissions here. Of course, the end of Cradle Con meant the beginning of preparations for another big convention. And that sounds like the perfect segway into…

Brooklyn Comic Con. Since AnimeNext pulled out for the year, I decided to attend a different event that was shifting over to an entirely new venue. The focus remained on general pop culture and most of the advertising was sure to include everything: Comics, Video games, Anime. Pretty much no fandom was left out in Brooklyn and everything got mostly equal focus. But alas, the event had a few minor mishaps and questionable design choices that I’ll touch on as we go:

Starting off the bright and cheerful Sunday morning, I accidentally arrived an hour and a half early, as I had gotten accustomed to conventions opening their doors at 10 AM. Brooklyn Comic Con’s intended opening was actually at 11:30 AM, and further issues occurring within the event’s venue caused it to stall for another hour and the line of attendees continuing to grow. I stood in line until around 12:30 when everything was all sorted out and attendees were allowed to enter, and the true fun began.

The Major R Owen’s Community Center is, truth be told a rather small venue to host a convention in. But as events like EMcon and Castle Point Anime Convention showed, you can still have a good functional event in a smaller venue. The venue was divided into two halves: One side was the vendors and artists all combined together into a single lineup, and the other was everything else and the kitchen sink.

The artists represented one of the most diverse lineups of artist types and styles but, surprisingly to me, focused more closely on anime art styles with some occasional comic influences. The vendors, by contrast, followed the comic convention’s main focus on comics. Only a few booths within the gallery of vendors would sell existing comics and goodies—the remaining set were dedicated to selling their original indie comics made from the ground up. Of course mainstream comics like Marvel and DC appeal to me only slightly, but something about indie comics and supporting artists by purchasing their comics makes me unable to resist purchasing said comics and taking them home. Especially in the Western convention scene where works featuring original characters are very hard sells to the attendees (just look at the state of anime convention artist alleys swimming on hot trends). And speaking of original creations I of course was able to snag several character commissions during the event, totaling up to eight commissions total.

What I was surprised to see with the artists at the event was a convention buddy that I met all the way back at ICon 2018, a now defunct Long Island-based convention. And of course a few other familiar faces within both the comic and anime convention scene attended and sold their art and.or comics. The vendors that didn’t specialize in original works featured things like the almost iconic “wall of vintage comics” that is at every comic convention and the video games and video game soundtracks at the Video Games New York booth. Said booth also played a few fun and recognizable tunes throughout the event, some of which I jammed to during my trots through the vendors and artists.

Most of the event’s general design was geared towards cosplay: About half of the attendees were in some form of outfit repping their favorite comic, anime, or game character. A few of them did catch my mind and I couldn’t resist starting a bite-sized collection of Cosplay Convention Shoots midway through the day. Cosplayers also received a special Cosplayer badge and some were allowed to enter the venue prior to opening. 4PM on both days featured the Cosplay Runway; a runway where cosplayers walked across a red carpet through the vendors and artist alley. Seeing all the cosplayers at the event all gather around in a central and easy to access spot was very welcoming, although it cut into an excursion through the vendors and artists as I had to navigate around all the cosplayers.

And then there was the other half of the venue, the “everything else” section. Featuring activities for people of all ages; there were tons of video games, a wrestling ring, a bouncy castle(…?), a playable Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit track, an inflatable obstacle course and slide, and a section for LARPing in cosplay and/or with foam weapons. With conventions like these being paid ticketed events that don’t attract many children, a few of the entertainment choices at BKCC felt, to keep things brief, unnecessary. Especially since the inflatable obstacle course took up most of the space in this area and ended up deflating only a few hours in. Then again, AnimeNYC last year had an entire section devoted to the military because they were sponsored by it even if a sponsor like that would more strongly fit NYCC. On a more positive note, the video gaming section was a solid addition as they usually are for any kind of event and it included a large number of current-day and retro games to try out. Seeing as I already own or have access to these games through other means and most of the games had people sitting at them all day, I unfortunately didn’t bother but otherwise was tempted to try out the small Mario Kart Live: Home Circuit track even in the instances where it had to be repeatedly managed by staff.

One thing the event sorely lacked was a good variety of food. Unlike other venues I’ve attended, there were no food courts inside the Major R Owen’s Community Center, leaving only the food trucks outside as the sole sources for grub mid-day. And the trucks that were chosen for the event were… not great; consisting of mostly exotic foreign food managed by staff that didn’t understand English. In fact, looking at the map of the venue that was posted, there were plans for even more food that didn’t show up. One truck in particular even refused to serve customers until 8 PM when the event’s main venue closed for the day. And if you had to step out to get food at any moment, you were forced back on line to keep the event’s venue manageable. And speaking of the venue, and as much as I enjoyed being there, it did have a few small but significant issues. Firstly, the loudspeakers used to play music and share announcements for panels and events through the day were all set too high, forcing me to speak very loudly or cover my ears when trying to speak to the artists and vendors at the event. And second, the sun’s position throughout the day shot a beam of bright sunlight through the west end of the event making me struggle to chat with the event’s many east-facing booths.

In spite of everything I had to point out, I had a great time at Brooklyn Comic Con 2024. Meeting up with artists I have not seen in a while and being introduced to and getting to chat with plenty of new artists from the local convention scene always makes for a good time. Especially in this rare kind of event that seemed to cater to every demographic possible: Comic books, Anime/Manga, Video Games, Retro Games, Fighting Games. Not a stone was left unturned. I never thought the fun would stop, but it did: Towards 8 PM, announcements that the event would close for the day became more frequent. I had two final commissions that I had to scramble and obtain before the venue closed in the event’s last ten minutes. The Video Games New York booth would really set the mood by playing one last song: Game Over from the Mario and Chill album by GameChops. I watched as the artist alley became a ghost town of closed-up vendor and artist booths and the venue’s internal lights went on. And so with no other options and no desire to join the event’s afterparty, I took a few last-minute shots of cosplays and the venue itself before making my leave.

Overall, the event was a solid good; about on par with most of the local events and some of the more medium-sized conventions. It had a great vendor hell and artist alley with tons of fandom representation and being able to meet and support tons of people is a strong part of any convention form me. Unfortunately, the excessively loud music loudspeaker audio, the lack of options for food, and some choices for entertainment that don’t exactly fit the event’s biggest target demographics. It reminded me of last year’s AnimeNext and some of the mishaps it also endured, although Brooklyn Comic Con’s flaws were not as significant nor easy to point out. For example, AnimeNext didn’t have background audio that made it impossible to communicate at times and had better options for food (read: not just foreign food), but Brooklyn Comic Con had all its panels, video gaming, and everything else under one roof and didn’t require a shuttle bus just to experience the whole event. And while both events have ways to improve, BKCC’s flaws were not glaring enough to completely kill the following year’s event. Meanwhile, AnimeNext’s reputation from having to cut costs and split its experiences between two separate venues let to it its show for this year and there’s strong hints that it will not be hosting another one in the future.

As for me, I’m currently unsure if I’ll be attending Brooklyn Comic Con 2025. Mostly since this year has been quite a busy one for me in more ways than one and I have not had much of a chance to sit back and take a chill with all the nonstop conventions, mobile game events that require me to get out of the house, various fighting game events and Games Done Quick, and my friend’s birthday party all occurring one after the other. While I am certainly up for returning to Brooklyn Comic Con after all the fun I experienced this year, everything that I listed above is making me think really hard about coming back next year. I won’t forget about BKCC and the many cool people and artists I met, but I don’t know if my love for the rest of the event is strong enough to want to come back.

With my full coverage on both CradleCon and Brooklyn Comic Con over, I’ll leave you with the commissions and cosplay shots of the event. Since EternalCon was canceled this year, the next events that I’ll cover will both take place next month: Long Island Retro Gaming Expo and the recently-rescheduled AnimeNYC.

The End of SRB2 Kart

Well we’ve all come to this; After five years the long-awaited sequel/followup to Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart, Dr. Robotnik’s Ring Racers, shaddowdropped during the week I was prepping for Castle Point Anime Convention 2024. The game that had famously swallowed most of my productive life for almost half a decade and put a stop to my years of routinely contributing to The Spriters’ Resource now has a full sequel filled with engine improvements, a hugely expanded roster of characters and tracks, new mechanics to balance out the eighty-one stat blocks so more racers then ever will be able to take wins without relying on modded rulesets, and perhaps most important to this post: an all new artstyle and a new tool for making custom tracks.

Originally I was planning to write this before Ring Racers Launched, but since the game emerged from my back out of nowhere while I was focused on other projects and while I was still stuck in something of a struggle to get back into working on projects, I decided to tear down and rewrite the post to get my points down in less time (and believe me the first draft was quite long).

For starters, the Superjustinbros Character Pack, or the SJBCP as I call it, will make a return in Ring Racers, now re-branded as the New Super Justin Bros. Character Pack. As of now, this is what I’m currently planning for the pack when it launches and I have more time to develop characters:

• The pack’s contents will gravitate towards new drivers with a stronger bias to Sonic and SEGA characters to better complement Ring Racers’ base roster (and my growing obsession for retro Sega titles).
• For characters returning from the SJBCP, they will receive overhauls and in some cases will use different, more modern looks than they looked in SRB2Kart. And for characters I choose not to bring back, I will fill their slots with new characters with a similar feel but with more appeal on a visual and recognition standpoint.
• The pack’s new non-Sonic and non-SEGA characters will give priority to more well-known characters, including popular characters and themes in Kart servers during that game’s time in the spotlight. The more obscure, left-field picks that defined the SJBCP will still persist but will include choices with more appeal from their design and personality alone. Some of the media I choose to represent will have a secondary character, side character, or rival/antagonist picked over the main character depending on who fits the theme of Ring Racers more (or who I prefer).
• Unlike SRB2Kart, there will be little to no themed character packs released as separate addons on the message board such as the Mini Racer Pack, the 8-bit Pack, the My Little Pony Pack, or the Super Mario Kart Pack. There is however a chance I may at least bring the Super Mario Kart pack back with the assistance of a close friend since it was somewhat of a popular mod back in SRB2K and by far the most successful of the themed offshoot packs next to the Pizza Tower Pack.

With much of my attention in May and most of June taken up by a combination of convention and birthday prep and the first two weeks of July being taken up by SGDQ 2024 and prep for my friend’s birthday, I got something of a late start to working on characters. In all honesty don’t expect to get any of my currently-planned characters done and released till sometime later this month, if not early August before I end up getting swamped by two back-to-back sessions of convention prep for the Long Island Retro Gaming Expo and AnimeNYC.

The first characters I will release for the pack include the two OC’s you see in the image above with updated designs, a Sonic character from one of the series’ first spin-off games, and a Sega arcade icon using a design of theirs look from an overlooked 90’s reboot. In order to ensure a sooner launch, the SEGA characters will launch separately in version 1.0 and 1.1 respectively. As with the SJBCP, all my characters will be available separately so players and server hosts have more freedom with what they want to host from the pack’s contents. As for what else is coming? Well, there are about 50+ ideas on the docket including returning characters but seeing as my drive to work on characters has not come back in full force yet and there are still other things I want to try messing with at some point, do not expect to see each and every one of them in Ring Racers unless by some miracle I end up developing a new, faster process for developing characters. Even if said process may not kick in until later this year when the number of events I have to attend is reduced and I have more weeks to myself and not having to prep for something every other week.

Anyways it looks like I made my point; this blogpost has been in the workings for quite some time and has gone through a multiple number of changes so it’s best I post it before I find myself with too many drafts to balance—especially with the growing number of subjects I want to discuss.

The post-30th Birthday Blog

Well then, 30 years of being on this planet.

For those not in the know, June 14th was my 30th birthday. And honestly I don't really have much to write about it. By this point, birthdays mostly just "happen" with little fanfare. These years I typically save Christmas as the big "go all out with gifts and etc" moment since I don't have conventions around that point that get the lion's share of my wallet. Of course my birthday still gives me an excuse to take the day off, go out to local arcades to spend a few hours playing games, and enjoy some homemade cake. And sometimes that's all I need to make me say "You know what, I had a good day today."

While I was deep into making this blogpost, there was something that alluded me last Spring: This year marks the 15th anniversary of Super Justin: the Blog. Yeah, surprising right? I originally started this blog in March 2009 at the age of 14, and since then the blog has changed and evolved so much, pivoting to longer and more professionally-written post about my projects, experiences with conventions, and other things I enjoy. And of course there will be many more things to come in the future as I work on digging myself out of this creative slump that I found myself in following a particular worldwide event from 2020 and move forwards with several particular ventures I've been eyeing up for some time now. As for what's next for this blog, I plan to start on the entry dedicated to sharing my experiences with Cradle Con and Brooklyn Comic Con before it becomes far too late and I have to head out for another two events in August. And if you're not into the convention scene around here, don't worry! There will be other posts to check out, provided I don't get too distracted with other pastimes while writing them...

And so, a new decade of Super Justin: the Blog starts.

The Conventions of 2024: Part 1: EMCon and Castle Point Anime Convention

Yes, this blogpost came out quite a bit later than I would have liked for a variety of reasons but I figured I better start typing it out before I head off to another big event later this week.

Last year, I dedicated a separate blogpost to each of the six “major events” I attended. This time, with the promotion of what was the “side events” to main event status to give each event a proper day in the limelight no matter their size, the structure had to change somewhat. And thus, today I will be writing on the first two events I appeared at in April of this year: EMcon, and Castle Point Anime Convention.

To begin, I’ll introduce you to EMcon, a small but sweet event at the East Meadow Public Library that’s only a short drive out from my place. While not the earliest event in the area that takes place, it’s the first one I attend after a lengthy break that starts from November the year prior and I like it precisely because it comes at the right place and the right time. It’s a very casual general geek culture event that has a few artist booths lined up in the front of the library, and being a free event at the library for all to attend, it also features a slew of activities for younger children. The artists present are a few local indie comic artists I’ve befriended over the years, including some that I’ve known from my first few years of attending conventions, and I always enjoy catching up with everyone after months of not seeing each other.

Even with the size of the event, there was still a good, if small, selection of cosplays and panels to experience on the event’s two days. One of the comic artists even got an entire panel to himself to show off and discuss his work process. There was a video gaming section but it was only for fighting game setups (there were tournaments for Tekken 8, Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Dragon Ball FighterZ) and it was packed away in a room to the side, distant from the rest of the event and the various vendors and artists that crowded around the library’s main entrance. Surprisingly, I was able to walk away from the event with three commissions, including one from a longtime friend I had met at Castle Point Anime Convention 2016, the very first convention I ever attended eight years prior.

And that was pretty much EMcon, one that I would love to go into more detail on but when we’re dealing with the smallest event of the year, there’s only so much detail I can get into without stretching things too far. If you’re wondering why I didn’t take any pictures of the interior, the large number of children in the building (in addition to wearing myself out the night prior playing Splatoon for four hours straight) made me reluctant to snap too many general pics of the venue. Maybe next year I’ll try to get some out but don’t hold your breath. Until then, time to move on to…

…Castle Point Anime Expo 2024. If EMcon was the warmup event, then Castle Point was the first true big event of the year. Unlike 2023, the event got to experience actual sunlight in the day, allowing for the outdoor cosplay and general atmosphere shots that I severely missed taking at and around the Medowlands Expo Center. It all felt very familiar, as familiar as my first time attending the event following the pandemic two years ago. Parking was thankfully a non-issue, making return trips to the car easy, short, and convenient. Stepping inside, all I had to do was present a QR code and I immediately received my badge, allowing me to explore the rest of the event. The inside of the convention center stayed pretty close to its layout from 2023 with one very crucial and well-appreciated change: The sound stage was not only much lower in volume overall, but it was now concealed in black tarp on all angles which allowed the stage to have light effects on for the entire day. Of course I still ended up losing my voice partway through trying to talk through my mask due to the crowds pouring into artist alley, but at least I was still able to cleanly chat with and likewise hear the artists in the artist alley.

Speaking of the artist’s alley, in past years Castle Point would typically have a line leading into the vendors’ hall and artists’ alley. It’s something they’ve done for years as a safety measure to avoid causing a big fire hazard but for reasons unknown, or perhaps since they saw the line as unnecessary following the move to a new venue, this was their first event in years to not feature the lines I associated with the event’s storefront areas. All I can say in response is a blunt “thank god” since every other event I’ve attended has never had to contend with lines into vendor halls and artist alleys (but getting into panels and even the events themselves is their own story). As for the Artist Alley itself, I was mostly unfamiliar with but still got along well with everyone that I chatted with. Getting commissions was something of a struggle at first but I was thankfully able to score the usual amount I get from CPAC, give or take maybe one or two images, and you can see the entire set of pics over on my Aozora’s Adventure blog.

Across from the artist’s alley was the video gaming section, and if you’re familiar with the gaming areas in anime conventions, you know what to expect: there were lots of fighting and non-fighting games on consoles, Japanese arcade and rhythm game cabinets, and stations to play board games. The fighting games were mainly the usuals: Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Guilty Gear Strive, and Smash Bros. Ultimate, and all of the aforementioned titles held tournaments as part of “King of Castle Point” through both days of the event. Since fighting games were not the central focus of the convention, I didn’t really stay around to spectate the fights. Dragon Ball FighterZ and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 were available to play, though neither game ran any sort of tournament. Of course I had to preserve the cute doodle of Ken Masters that accompanies the signup paper which to my knowledge was drawn by DrowZs, the artist of the webcomic One Time Taxes that was receiving funding through the tournament. (If I'm wrong, please correct me!)

I did attend a single panel held in the mid-afternoon, one that I ensure I don’t miss each CPAC: The Dad Panel. What is the Dad Panel, you might be asking? Well, it’s a big comedy routine featuring a collective of four dads with their audience playing the role of their theoretical, collective children. The “children” ask the dads questions and they react accordingly, and the amount of humor that was able to be blasted out in an hour thanks to the heavy audience participation element of the panel and a half was astronomical. If it was available anywhere online for viewing, I would have strongly recommended you check it out--but since it's not, I suppose you'll have to catch it when it returns next year!

Unlike last year, the entire set of console games went dark as soon as the vendors and artists closed up, and there were no late-night free play setups or tournaments held even if it’d be the perfect time to play some Mario Kart or go bash some skulls in a few rounds of Good-Ass-Tekken. Only the arcade games (in a dimly-lit gaming area), a few late night panels, and two music and dancing performances were held past 7PM including the event’s signature “CPAC: the Dance”. Thankfully, the event was still very much active—the arcade machines still had lines lining up to play the various rhythm games, the Initial D machine remained alive through the night, and a four-player Gundam arcade title with a spectator monitor got quite a bit of spotlight through the event. Many people also hung out across the venue even with the lights over most of the event shut off, chatting with friends and watching the last set of performances at the music stage before returning to their hotel rooms and calling it a night.

And that was Castle Point Anime Convention 2024. How was it overall? Well, a month past its original date, I still am looking back on it pretty fondly, being just the right size for my first big event after the end of my winter break. If there was anything I’d say could use work, the only thing that would really come to mind is everything in the game room shutting off after 7PM. The vendor’s hall was also somewhat not to my liking, but considering I do not attend conventions for the vendors for reasons I stated before, I am in no position to say how it could be made better, especially with the limited space the vendors could occupy compared to other anime shows like AnimeNext and especially AnimeNYC. The one saving grace this event had over 2023 was the weather being bright and sunny.

At this point, you all may be familiar with how I usually end these anime convention overviews: a look back at the “trends” of the convention via its cosplays and the arts and other merch sold in the Artist’s Alley. I’m just going to go out and say that Genshin/Honkai, Jojo, One Piece, and to a lesser extent Demon Slayer were the biggest winners when it came to cosplays. With the artist’s alley I couldn’t really tell what series would have “won” as there was quite a wide range of representation even with the obvious biases twoards the newest and most popular media franchises. And because I’m something of a fighting game guy and have friends in the FGC, I’m happy to conform that quite a bit of Guilty Gear representation was at the event via cosplays and a few artist booths. The same cannot be said for Street Fighter 6 or Tekken 8 despite the tournaments the two games had in the gaming section. If you’re wondering how big the cosplay photo gallery got, I was able to get 100 shots total. Not close to my current record but by this point I think chasing down cosplays is much more cardio than my body can take, considering 120 is my average for Castle Point Anime Convention anyways. Now that that's taken care of, you can see the complete cosplay shoot gallery here. The full commission haul for both Castle Point and EMcon can be found here.

That's all for now! See you next month for an overview on Cradle Con and Brooklyn Comic Con, which will also be... the month of my 30th birthday?!